Eskimo in Print

Scattered over 1,254,000 sq. mi. of Arctic waste, Canada's 11,000 Eskimos for centuries have spoken a complicated language. The Eskimo can pack whole sentences into a guttural syllable or two, commands 10,000 to 15,000 words--a scholar's quota--just for everyday discourse. He gives some of his verbs hundreds of forms, one for each subtle shade of meaning.* But the Eskimo has never printed the words he speaks. Last week, from the Department of Northern Affairs and Natural Resources in Ottawa came the first serious effort to put the Eskimo in periodical print.

What moved north from Ottawa was a slender magazine called Inuktitut (The Eskimo Way), a publication so thoroughly Eskimo that even the Department of Northern Affairs cannot fully translate its contents. Its 40 pages were written by Eskimos, illustrated by Eskimos, typed for engraving on a special typewriter with Eskimo characters, the strange shorthand symbols devised by 19th century Anglican missionaries to approximate the language. "Those writings like this," went Inuktitut's introduction, "they have a name: 'The Eskimo Way.' By the Eskimos only have they been written, and by the Eskimos will they generally be read." In Inuktitut, those writings looked like this:

No Word for Man. Inuktitut's literary fare is beamed straight at igloos from Aklavik to Frobisher Bay: an account by Idlout, an Eskimo from Resolute Bay, of a visit to Greenland (he was charmed by the girls); a section on Eskimo haute couture (which made the telling point that the Eskimo will freeze in the white man's garb); even two blank pages --"something to write on" -- for readers who live in an area where paper is a rare and treasured commodity.

The brainchild of Robert G. H. Williamson, supervising editor, and Northern Affairs Minister Alvin Hamilton, Inuktitut is almost entirely the work of an accomplished, 20-year-old Eskimo girl, Mary Panegoosho, daughter of a respected hunter from Ellesmere Island, Canada's northernmost point. Despite only three years of formal schooling (fifth to eighth grade in Hamilton, Ont. ), Mary is a skillful artist and writer, a competent self-taught photographer and typist who produced most of the gay line drawings that decorate the magazine, contributed most of the photographs, wrote several of the articles. The only other Inuktitut staffer is Abraham Okpik, 30, a stocky hunter from Aklavik.

Few publications would care to face the difficulties that confront Inuktitut. While Eskimo syllabic writing is basically simple -- twelve symbols, convertible to 48 by subtle compass shifts of position -- in usage it can get incredibly complex. There is no Eskimo word for magazine ("writings" covers everything), or man (inuk, the word Eskimos use, means "hunter"), electricity, car, or wheel (many Eskimos have never seen a wheel, let alone a car).

Only a Dream. Distribution alone is a monumental problem. In the Eastern dialect, Inuktitut's circulation is limited to some 2,000 families, so widely strewn that the magazine must eventually be carried, over months, by Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Hudson's Bay traders, and dog sled; to reach Eskimos in Canada's Western north, Inuktitut will print a separate edition in the Roman characters familiar to that region. The magazine must go out in spring before the Arctic thaw, in summer after the river ice has melted, in fall before the freeze, and in winter before the curtain of the Arctic night.

Editor Williamson foresees the time when the magazine will become an Eskimo business venture, with Eskimo publishers, subscription solicitors and admen. At present, that is only piyumagiamik, a dream.

* Sample: nagligivara (I love him), nagliget-yangelagit (I do not love you), nagligelautyan-gelagit (did I not love you?), nagligeungnange-gupko (if I am not able to love him).

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